8 Tips to Squash Negative Thoughts (and Promote Positive Thinking)

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Anais Nin

Sometimes it’s enough for a minor thought or a feeling to drag you down. A small word directed at us might hurt slightly but then things spiral down into hopelessness, worry or sadness.

Negativity that wells up inside of you or in the world around you can quickly become toxic and hold you back from living the life you want.

But here are some tips and habits that could help us from overcoming negative thoughts.

1. Change of perspective

When life looks bleak for any reason, we could ask ourselves better questions. Questions that will not only help us feel better but also teach us as we think about them.

Questions like:

• What’s one good thing about this situation?
• What’s one thing I can do differently the next time to likely have a better outcome?
• What’s one thing I can learn from this?
• How would my best friend support and help me in this situation?

2. Note to self: don’t dwell on other people’s perception of you.

We cannot control what others might think of us and those things does not matter in the long run.

Everyone makes mistakes; big or small. But people won’t remember those forever. They have their own lives, and work, and family to take care of.

Your focus should be on doing what you want deep down in your life and accept and learn from the mistakes you make on your way.

3. Question the thought.

Whenever we are dogged by any negative thoughts, we could ask ourselves:

Should I take it seriously?

Mostly the answer is NO.

Stresses from other aspects of our lives like work, tiredness, hunger could be the cause of amplifying the negativity in our minds.

Focusing on that small negative moment will make us lose the importance of the rest of the bigger picture in life, which is mostly positive.

4. Avoid the sources of negativity.

Think about the top 3 sources of negativity in our lives.

It could be people, websites, magazines, podcasts, music and so on.

Then focus on reducing the time spent on engaging with these sources. Then spend the time you’ve freed up this week on more positive sources and people that are already in your life or that you want to explore and perhaps make a new part of it.

5. Stop magnifying the problem.

To stop a small negative thought from becoming a big monster in your mind confront it early. You can do that by for example using tip #3 in this article.

Or you can zoom out. Do that by asking yourself a question like:

Will this matter in 5 years? Or even 5 weeks?

This answer is likely in most cases that it won’t and that you were only starting to make a mountain out of a molehill (or out of plain air).

6. Talk about it

When negative thoughts are bottled up inside our minds, it starts clouding our decisions. Talking about them with someone you could confide with helps relieve the pent-up stress. Having a conversation about it could help shed the situation in new light.

7. Be mindful of the present

Negativity often arises from a memory of past or thinking about the future. It may not be possible to totally erase these thoughts but instead of dwelling deeper, we could put our attention fully into the present moment.

Some ways to become mindful are

• Focus on your breathing: Take a deep breath and focus only on the air that is going in and out of the lungs and nothing else.

• Observe the world around you: Focusing on the mundane of daily life could surprisingly help relieve stress and negativity.

Just focus on the people walking by outside your window, the muffled words and noises from the street, the smells around you and the sun shining in and warming your skin.

8. Exercise and workout

A simple exercise like a short walk could flood our brains with those feel-good hormones that could instantly change the way we think about a situation.

A 20 to 30-minute workout or lifting some free weights would do wonders to our overall physical and mental wellbeing.

This blog was derived from an original article that could be found at :https://www.positivityblog.com/overcome-negative-thoughts/